Tech Tonic | For TV and OTT, the more things change, the more they stay the same

I have been wondering about this for a while now. Perhaps you are too. Let us put the cards on the table, shall we? How many OTT streaming subscriptions are you paying for? Have you given up a conventional subscription to a cable or direct-to-home (DTH) service provider? If you have (I cannot blame you; channel packs have become more expensive), has this switch really been as convenient as you may have envisioned? There seems to be no clear answer that’d guide personal preferences, and you’ll soon come to an entirely different set of realisations.
Let us look at some numbers. At the end of December 2023, coinciding with the festive quarter, India’s DTH subscriber base saw a fairly big dip from 64.18 million to 63.52 million according to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Not a good sign and that is one reason why the likes of Tata Play are trying their best to hold on to the existing users with perceived value, such as an upgrade to a Tata Play HD+ or Binge+ set-top box (STB), significant lower than its usual price, or DishTV bundling a Smart+ customisable streaming subscription bundle for all linear TV subscribers. If you can’t beat them, bundle them.
We are where we are, because of a sustained narrative to “cut the cord”. It shouldn’t have been this complicated, but we made it so. Most of the 2010s saw linear TV being pitted against streaming platforms. If you held on to the former, you’d be considered archaic and old-fashioned. You’d admit though, that there is an old-school charm, a comfort, that a TV remote brings. Some of us cling to that comfort, but the newer generations don’t know its charm (neither do they have any familiarity with dial-up internet modems).
Linear TV broadcasts on cable or DTH cannot be customised to your schedule. In my childhood, ‘TV guides’ took a fairly prominent position in our lives (though, our favourite show schedules were memorised by heart). However, if we factor in Tata Play’s recent announcement of the multi-stream functionality of customising advertisement delivery, in which different ads can be shown to different audiences during the same programme. If that experiment works, could it lead to a more dynamic TV programming schedule?
After cable TV, Netflix was the way to go. Now, we have reached a stage where the streaming subscriptions are adding up, quite significantly. A lot of it has to do with the sheer number of apps there are, even more so if we are to factor in India’s regional language streaming platforms. Secondly, the fragmentation of streaming rights, particularly for sports, means you’ll end up subscribing to more than you may be able to regularly watch.
On April 25, JioCinema reconfigured their premium subscription plans to ₹29 per month if you wish to stream on one device at a time, and ₹89 per month with simultaneous streaming on up to 4 devices. That’s not all, JioCinema is finding an answer to a problem which they created – removing ads for Premium users, which wasn’t the case till now. However, while reading through the terms and conditions carefully, one soon arrives at the realisation that the entire experience won’t be ad-free. There would be no ads in streams, but the JioCinema app will have ads within the interface. Yet, this is the most affordable OTT subscription plan thus far. More than anything else, this will drive new sign-ups. We’ll likely see that data a quarter down the line.
In comparison, Netflix is ₹149 per month onwards (that’s mobile only; broader plans are ₹199 per month onwards), Amazon Prime at ₹299 per month, Disney+ Hotstar at ₹299 per month and a similar outlay for Sony Liv. If you are to subscribe to all these streaming subscriptions (admit it, you haven’t), that’s a substantial outlay every month.
Speaking of those annoying ads, the IPL cricket tournament, as it does every year, makes one contemplate their equation with advertisements. It is a bombardment. This year, I did an experiment. Star Sports vs JioCinema, just how do they compare the ads between overs and overlays such as the L-shaped ads during match broadcast? Two to three ads are stuffed before getting back to the match just as the bowler begins their run-up, but JioCinema mostly avoids the L-shaped on-screen ad overlays; meanwhile, Star Sports isn’t averse to the idea at all.
Back in the early days of premium subscriptions for streaming services, the core idea was to remove all sorts of ads. I remember the days when sports broadcasts also didn’t have ads on streaming platforms, because a fee was being charged for premium experience. That joy was short-lived. It is now par for the course for ads to be present in all live sports streams. This is because the streaming rights have been acquired at a great cost which needs to be recovered.
Friction in experience still needs refinement. Try streaming Star Sports to watch the IPL on the Tata Play companion app on your phone or tablet. It won’t. Even though you’d logically expect it to if you’ve subscribed to the channel on your TV. But why? You must download JioCinema instead.
For now, my favourite sports streaming experience comes from F1 TV Pro. No ads in the stream for the entire duration of the race. It costs ₹299 per month and is much smoother streaming at 50fps, compared to 25fps in most other platforms for sports live streams. Amazon Prime Video isn’t too far behind with the latter technology implemented well, but it’s a pity they have limited streaming rights.
Vishal Mathur is the technology editor for Hindustan Times. Tech Tonic is a weekly column that looks at the impact of personal technology on the way we live, and vice-versa. The views expressed are personal.
Vishal Mathur is Technology Editor for Hindustan Times. When not making sense of technology, he often searches for an elusive analog space in a digital world. …view detail